Sorry, I should've clarified that I'm referring to the NES original and not the terrible DS remake and its myriad of ports.

Yes, FFIII is incredibly oldschool, but really, its only because of a few glaring problems that hold the game back than anything else, and it had several clever ideas that were either used later on or woefully abandoned and not given a second thought. Basically, FFIII needed to not make enemies in those Mini/Toad dungeons so powerful that you can't really deal with them while in those statuses, tone down some of the AoE attacks that some bosses like Salamander and Garuda have, really tone down those splitting enemies in the Ancient Cave and Cave of Darkness, and add a save point to at least the top of the Crystal Tower (not that it really matters since the tower itself isn't terribly long if you know what you are doing and ever bother to turn around and save after cleaning the place out of loot; the World of Darkness is the real issue and that's partly due to it being beyond the point of no return).

The ideas that it had that should've seen more use across the series is stuff like using party morphing status effects to actually morph the party at points and let them proceed (status effects stopped altering your overworld appearance all together by FFVII), Jobs having field abilities on top of battle abilities (FFV was the last numbered game to have that; though that's more due to the fact that Jobs themselves wound up getting folded into whatever conferred abilities like GFs and Sphere Grids and the like), spell levels/charges instead of just MP (a lot of otherwise useless spell chafe can end up being actually useful under this system, like when you're plowing through the final dungeon on your attack run and you didn't want to deal with bullshit like mage enemies throwing out insta-death spells, suddenly all those now relatively useless level 4 spells with crap like Ifrit, Ice 3, Shade, Break, Libro, Confu and Mute might find a use, especially when you consider how many dozens of charges level 4 spells have at the end of the game compared to your more valuable/useful level 8 spells; compare that to a game like FFVI where most spells become worthless due to the presence of the Economizer or your hundreds of MP and a super cheap and effective Osmose).

Of course, I'm not saying that all games should've had these, but it wouldn't have hurt to have mixed it up more once in a while instead of turning every game since into a race towards getting Ultima/Meteor/Bahamut/Knights of the Round/Cure 3/Curaga/Curaja/Life 2/Full-Life/Holy, while traversing the fields/dungeons slowly turned into cutscene roller-coasters.

Reminds me of the rare item spawn rate in FF12 that was like 0.5% or something. Just maddeningly terrible game design.

That's after you build up a kill combo of 256! God was that a terrible design decision!

Was it? I don't even remember that. I just remember spending days getting the Tournesol (I think was called. The most powerful sword) by having to repeatedly open chests in various locations.

FFXII was loaded with terrible design decisions when it came to loot/equipment. You had things like:

- The Zodiac Spear, which you could find in a chest late in the game, 'IF' you didn't open very specific and very unmarked chests throughout the game (you might as well have not bothered to open any of them since most were filled with crap anyways).- The Diamond Armlet, with its very description stating to wear this to improve the quality of loot found in chests, except in the case of the chests in the ostentatiously final dungeon where wearing said accessory guarantees garbage. This is never mentioned in game.- The above with the knife, and so many other stealables from 'this one rare enemy you only get one shot at fighting'.- The Bazaar, where you sell off enemy drops to make certain loot available for purchase. Among these are rare items like High Arcana that are required for really rare weapons and armor, but can also be used to make an Elixir or a Megaelixir which aren't nearly as useful, among other items. And you don't know what a recipe requires until you've completed it.- The Genji Equipment, which are all stolen from Gilgamesh. He's the only enemy in the game whom you can steal multiple items from during the same fight (when you lower his HP beyond a certain threshold, a cutscene will play and his stealable loot table changes). Knowing this during the first fight with Gilgamesh is the only way to get the Genji Glove, by far the best accessory in the game.- The Chests in the final dungeon have only a certain percentage of even appearing to begin with. Some of which are really hard and time consuming to get to. They themselves only have a very small chance of containing anything of value.

Also why did the two plot swords you get have to be almost total garbage when you get your first one (and the second isn't any better)?

Dear lord I was wondering why I didn't give FF12 another chance, and that kinda sealed the deal.... That and needing a goddamn license to wear a hat. DAMN YOU FICTIONAL GOVERNMENT....DAAAAAAMMMMN YOOOOOOOOUUU

Dear lord I was wondering why I didn't give FF12 another chance, and that kinda sealed the deal.... That and needing a goddamn license to wear a hat. DAMN YOU FICTIONAL GOVERNMENT....DAAAAAAMMMMN YOOOOOOOOUUU

The Licenses weren't so bad if you A) weren't looking for specific character builds and B) knew to go after Traits and Quickenings ASAP, since those actually gave you permanent boosts, and gear was so fucking expensive/hard to come by that after a while you bought the license once you got the gear rather than the other way around (and the Golden Armlet made getting JP easy enough to be able to buy whatever you needed once you maxed out the Traits).

Also, High Arcanas can only be stolen from unique monster hunts and the quantity needed to craft the best gear is almost equal to the number of steal-able ones.Of course, the odd of stealing an High Arcana is very low and even worst, the High Arcanas are often the RARE steal. This mean that if you steal the NORMAL steal (often an Arcana) you have to restart the battle.The odds of a rare steal are 1-5% usually but they can be boosted by chaining enemies before the encounter. Thus, you end up having to chain 100s of enemies, try the boss, get the normal steal, reset, chain 100s of enemies, try the boss, fail again, reset, ad nauseum.

And yes, the best weapons are both 2-handed swords (Tournesol and Excalibur). After that all the other weapons are kinda far enough behind that it doesn't really matter what you put on the 3rd character... and by that I mean you don't care if you put the gun, ninja sword, katana or spear... because all the best ones of each of the other weapon types suck really bad.

Also, High Arcanas can only be stolen from unique monster hunts and the quantity needed to craft the best gear is almost equal to the number of steal-able ones.Of course, the odd of stealing an High Arcana is very low and even worst, the High Arcanas are often the RARE steal. This mean that if you steal the NORMAL steal (often an Arcana) you have to restart the battle.The odds of a rare steal are 1-5% usually but they can be boosted by chaining enemies before the encounter. Thus, you end up having to chain 100s of enemies, try the boss, get the normal steal, reset, chain 100s of enemies, try the boss, fail again, reset, ad nauseum.

And yes, the best weapons are both 2-handed swords (Tournesol and Excalibur). After that all the other weapons are kinda far enough behind that it doesn't really matter what you put on the 3rd character... and by that I mean you don't care if you put the gun, ninja sword, katana or spear... because all the best ones of each of the other weapon types suck really bad.

The Masamune can be really good if paired with the Genji Glove for maximum attack chains (bonus points for getting one from a hunt), and the Zodiac Spear is at least really powerful if you can get it, but it isn't worth reseting the game over if you don't. But yeah, the rest of the weapons aren't really good enough to warrant having the best in them. What you really want on your weapons are added effects like Deathbringer's insta-KO or elemental damage.

For Armor, you want shit that gives good stat boosts for what you're trying to do (Str for damage dealers, Spd or Mag for everyone else) since that's where 90% of your build's stat specialization are coming from.

That said, an addendum to my previous post. You can save yourself the effort of having to track down a few rare items if you hold off on buying a Bazaar item until you've unlocked all the items that require that particular material (for instance, the Masamune and the Tournesol both require Gemsteel as a material component; if you hold off on buying the Masamune until you acquire 3x Empyhreal Souls and 3x Serpentariuses, you will only need 3x Gemsteel instead of 5x.

FFXII in 5 easy steps:1) get quickening as fast as possible (almost at the expense of everything else) 2) Do hunts LOTS OF HUNTS (possibly ALL the hunts if you can stomach the never ending Yiazmat fight) as soon as they become available you're fairly certain you're prepared for it. 3) pick a core group and stick with them as early in the game as possible (even Penelo is useful once she's gloriously over leveled). 4) Do NOT ignore the gambit system. People who do this are insane and irritate me almost as much as all the people who complain about FFXIII's paradigm shift system yet never bothered to use it correctly (and instead just tried to enter in commands manually and wound up dying 100's of time because they were too slow)5) I still have no idea how I ended up dumping 96 hours into a game with so little plot/an almost pointless antagonist/the literal worst main character in major RPG history.

edit: I mostly ignored espers until I found out about how much they directly connect to the story in FF Tactics .I'm pretty sure their existence in XII is proof that, even though the technology is far more advanced, that game took place many years before Tactics (WHEN DO WE GET TO FIND OUT ABOUT WHAT CAUSED THE CATACLYSM??). So then I had to go back through and get most of them right before the final dungeon.

FFXII in 5 easy steps:1) get quickening as fast as possible (almost at the expense of everything else) 2) Do hunts LOTS OF HUNTS (possibly ALL the hunts if you can stomach the never ending Yiazmat fight) as soon as they become available you're fairly certain you're prepared for it. 3) pick a core group and stick with them as early in the game as possible (even Penelo is useful once she's gloriously over leveled). 4) Do NOT ignore the gambit system. People who do this are insane and irritate me almost as much as all the people who complain about FFXIII's paradigm shift system yet never bothered to use it correctly (and instead just tried to enter in commands manually and wound up dying 100's of time because they were too slow)5) I still have no idea how I ended up dumping 96 hours into a game with so little plot/an almost pointless antagonist/the literal worst main character in major RPG history.

edit: I mostly ignored espers until I found out about how much they directly connect to the story in FF Tactics .I'm pretty sure their existence in XII is proof that, even though the technology is far more advanced, that game took place many years before Tactics (WHEN DO WE GET TO FIND OUT ABOUT WHAT CAUSED THE CATACLYSM??). So then I had to go back through and get most of them right before the final dungeon.

Well if you count the Lunar series as a whole as a major RPG series, then no, Vaan is by far and away not the worst JRPG protagonist in a major RPG.

Then again, even if we ignore Lunar Dragon Song, we still have some of the Grandia games (namely 3, though 1's Justin is pretty boring/lame), Wild ARMs 5, Xenosaga 3 (goddammit Shion), White Knight Chronicles (though this is debatable as these games did not turn out to be a major RPG series; thankfully), Star Ocean 4 (the name Edge Maverick was the only good thing about that character) and possibly Star Ocean 3 (Fayt doesn't really win any awards for exceeding competence, even when armed with bullshit plot lasers out of fucking nowhere) among others (depending on what you define 'major RPG series' as) who rank (and stank) worse than Vaan could've hoped to.

After all, while one can argue that Vaan shouldn't have been made in the first place, outside of some occasional derpery, he really didn't do all that much to hijack the plot or hog the spotlight, at the very least (then again, he didn't exactly drive the plot past the start either, almost like the devs wrote him as a goddamn Stealth Protagonist who forgot that he's already the Main Character, and instead turned around and had him abandon the plot's driving wheel, which Ashe eventually stepped in and took over, because what would Star Wars do when Luke and Han weren't driving the plot).

FFXII in 5 easy steps:1) get quickening as fast as possible (almost at the expense of everything else) 2) Do hunts LOTS OF HUNTS (possibly ALL the hunts if you can stomach the never ending Yiazmat fight) as soon as they become available you're fairly certain you're prepared for it. 3) pick a core group and stick with them as early in the game as possible (even Penelo is useful once she's gloriously over leveled). 4) Do NOT ignore the gambit system. People who do this are insane and irritate me almost as much as all the people who complain about FFXIII's paradigm shift system yet never bothered to use it correctly (and instead just tried to enter in commands manually and wound up dying 100's of time because they were too slow)5) I still have no idea how I ended up dumping 96 hours into a game with so little plot/an almost pointless antagonist/the literal worst main character in major RPG history.

edit: I mostly ignored espers until I found out about how much they directly connect to the story in FF Tactics .I'm pretty sure their existence in XII is proof that, even though the technology is far more advanced, that game took place many years before Tactics (WHEN DO WE GET TO FIND OUT ABOUT WHAT CAUSED THE CATACLYSM??). So then I had to go back through and get most of them right before the final dungeon.

Well if you count the Lunar series as a whole as a major RPG series, then no, Vaan is by far and away not the worst JRPG protagonist in a major RPG.

Then again, even if we ignore Lunar Dragon Song, we still have some of the Grandia games (namely 3, though 1's Justin is pretty boring/lame), Wild ARMs 5, Xenosaga 3 (goddammit Shion), White Knight Chronicles (though this is debatable as these games did not turn out to be a major RPG series; thankfully), Star Ocean 4 (the name Edge Maverick was the only good thing about that character) and possibly Star Ocean 3 (Fayt doesn't really win any awards for exceeding competence, even when armed with bullshit plot lasers out of fucking nowhere) among others (depending on what you define 'major RPG series' as) who rank (and stank) worse than Vaan could've hoped to.

After all, while one can argue that Vaan shouldn't have been made in the first place, outside of some occasional derpery, he really didn't do all that much to hijack the plot or hog the spotlight, at the very least (then again, he didn't exactly drive the plot past the start either, almost like the devs wrote him as a goddamn Stealth Protagonist who forgot that he's already the Main Character, and instead turned around and had him abandon the plot's driving wheel, which Ashe eventually stepped in and took over, because what would Star Wars do when Luke and Han weren't driving the plot).

At least Justin actually has a purpose the entire game (explore new parts of the world and then save it) and Yuki is basically Justin except with airplanes. Both of those two are bottomless pits of good guy pluck and resolve. Neither (pretty decent) game could really go anywhere without them. If FFXII killed off Vaan after the first 10 hours and just made Balthier the new protagonist it wouldn't have made much of a difference. He is the 'worst' protagonist because, in a game that lacks many compelling characters, he is about the 4th or 5th most important.

Being nearly irrelevant in YOUR OWN GAME trumps being stupid or annoying in a game you are still central to the plot of.

edit: now that I think about it, killing off a protagonist and then replacing them with a new one part way through sounds like a great idea. If placed in the right game, and if done correctly (and kept sufficiently under wraps ) that could turn into a really compelling narrative.